Our projects

Each project is an area of law or subject matter that the Law Commission has agreed to review. The Commission works on several projects at a time. Together, these projects make up the Commission's annual work programme.

Use the search filters below to find particular projects. For more information on how we work see how we conduct projects.

The Law Commission and the Ministry of Justice conducted a review of the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, as is required by section 357 of that Act. The review was referred to us by the then Minister of Justice on 28 June 2016 and we jointly...

Section 202(1) of the Evidence Act required the Commission to report to the Minister of Justice on the following matters:
(a) the operation of the provisions of the Act since its commencement;
(b) whether those provisions should be...

This project reviews the laws that determine how security sensitive information should be dealt with in court proceedings. The review looks at how to protect information that may prejudice New Zealand’s security. It also considers whether the...

The Law Commission has worked closely with the Ministry of Economic Development in a project to rewrite the Credit (Repossession) Act 1997, which has been found to have many practical difficulties with it.

For this project, the Commission reviews existing rules of evidence around admissibility of previous convictions, similar offending and bad character. In particular, the extent to which the court is made aware of prior convictions of an accused,...

This project reviews existing rules providing access to Court records and developing principles to govern access to Court records, the retention and archiving of records. It considers the appropriateness of a single code providing rules for all...

The purpose of the Evidence Law projects is to to make the law of evidence as clear, simple and accessible as practicable, and to facilitate the fair, just and speedy judicial resolution of disputes. In particular, this project examines the...

The purpose of this project is to make the law of evidence as clear, simple and accessible as practicable, and to facilitate the fair, just and speedy judicial resolution of disputes. In April 1991 the Law Commission published the first of a...

The purpose of this project is to make the law of evidence as clear, simple and accessible as practicable, and to facilitate the fair, just and speedy judicial resolution of disputes. In April 1991 the Law Commission published the first of a...